Remember.

Remember how Google+ was going to change everything?

Remember how Second Life was going to change everything?

Remember how 5G was going to change everything?

Self-driving cars?

3D printing?

Cryptocurrency?

The Metaverse?

Web 3.0?

Twelve things I've forgotten?

And A.I.?

In advertising, remember how integration was going to change everything?

The new CCO?

That account win?

Being bought by WPP?

The new caterer in the cafeteria?

Or interactive marketing and conversations about brands?

Or the "glowy" highlight on the "Learn More" button?

Or the starburst?

Or our biggest sale of the season?

Remember all the things that were going to change everything? Most of which we hardly even remember anymore?

Like Vietnam? The Holocaust? Hiroshima? Jim Crow? "Separate but Equal?" Bombing Black churches?

Remember all the things that were going to change everything?

Over the last few weeks, my wife and I have been drip-dosing ourselves with Sergey Bondarchuk's seven-hour epic from 1965, "War and Peace." It might be the most amazing motion picture ever filmed. It, literally, had a cast of millions. Its battle of Borodino is the largest battle scene ever filmed, making "Saving Private Ryan" look like an episode of "Gilligan's Island."

With every scene, I mutter to myself, "Oh, the death of the aristocracy, this will change everything." Or "Oh, the Russian Winter, this will change everything." Or, "Oh, Napoleon's a scoundrel and his men know it, this will change everything." 

But nothing, really, in the 200 and 12 years since has changed all that. The West is still fighting the Russians. The aristocracy is still decadent and still coming out on top. And people are still, blindly, following tinpot despots.

Disruption comes and goes.

Vast changes come and go.

Even all four horse-people of the apocalypse come and go. And today, roughly 97.9-percent of people think an apocalypse is a type of circus act.

More and more.

I'm with Faulkner. 

He said in "Requiem for a Nun," "The past is never dead. It's not even past."

This is the latest mumbo-jumbo some holding company that fired $300 million of people is investing $300 million in. Is there a sentence below you believe? Is there a sentence below that doesn't hurt your soul? This one gets me: "basic creative tasks like writing headlines." 

Anyone who thinks writing headlines is a basic task has never written a headline. Certainly not one that stood out amid the ten-thousand that we see everyday. Creating scripts, and synthetic voices? 

They'll probably create scripts and synthetic voices about authenticity.

Really? Clients want to work with companies that do this? It reminds me of the old joke, "sincerity is everything. Once you can fake that, you've got it made."

When A.I. and sentient machines have taken over all of earth, someone, someday, some still small voice will still put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard and scribble out something a machine can't.

A joke. Some hope. A tear. A tiny bit of fight.

Those are the things that change everything.